The Guardian: I worked on the US drone program. The public should know what really goes on
Heather Linebaugh theguardian.com, Sunday 29 December 2013 07.30 EST
An Elbit Systems Hermes 450 drone. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images
Whenever I read comments by politicians defending the Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Predator and Reaper program – aka drones – I wish I could ask them some questions. I'd start with "how many women and children have you seen incinerated by a Hellfire missile?" and "How many men have you seen crawl across a field, trying to make it to the nearest compound for help while bleeding out from severed legs?" Or even more pointedly, "how many soldiers have you seen die on the side of a road in Afghanistan because our ever-so-accurate UAV's [unmanned aerial vehicle] were unable to detect an IED [improvised explosive device] that awaited their convoy?"
Few of these politicians who so brazenly proclaim the benefits of drones have a real clue of what actually goes on. I, on the other hand, have seen these awful sights first-hand.
I knew the names of some of the young soldiers I saw bleed to death on the side of a road. I watched dozens of military-aged males die in Afghanistan, in empty fields, along riversides, and some right outside the compound where their family was waiting for them to return home from mosque.
The US and British militaries insist that this is such an expert program, but it's curious that they feel the need to deliver faulty information, few or no statistics about civilian deaths and twisted technology reports on the capabilities of our UAV's. These specific incidents are not isolated, and the civilian casualty rate has not changed, despite what our defense representatives might like to tell us...more
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/dec/29/drones-us-military
There's no statute of limitations on murder.
= new reply since forum marked as read
These new ones are so much cooler aren't they.
And the Gorgon Stare:
What a thing to be proud of. The US might not be able to build a bridge anymore (or subways), but it can sure build some impressive killing and spying devices.
the massive cable, key sections of the iconic tower and deck were all made in China, which is emerging as an infrastructure powerhouse in more places than San Francisco. For example, Chinese companies have contracted with New York City for a bridge, the subway system and a commuter train platform.
http://www.npr.org/2011/09/16/140515737/california-turns-to-china-for-new-bay-bridge
Solar plants could be built, like Germany does, but that might upset the 100 year plan for utilities. And where's the fun in that. Putting people back to work is so "Ross Perot".
Response to L0oniX (Reply #14)
when we carpet bombed entire neighborhoods because we were attempting to get a few people....
seems to me, drones are definitely an improvement over the old method...
doesn't make it 'right'.. but youd be surprised what you can get away with if you just use the word 'war'... 
personally, its the domestic surveillance that gets to me the most.
It's done in our name but the benefits are given to corporations, like Cinnabon getting to expand all over Libya
Cinnabon in Tripoli as Libya Opens Up to Foreign Business
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-12-13/cinnabon-in-tripoli-as-libya-opens-up-to-foreign-business
Corporatism. It works, if you're in the club.
Sid
[/img]Welcome to Global Drones Watch!
Welcome to Global Drones Watch. The purpose of this site is to provide useful information about drones, and to encourage people to become active in efforts to stop killer drones overseas and stop domestic drones from violating our privacy and safety.
This site is run by CODEPINK Women for Peace and CODEPINK is coordinating a coalition of organizations, academics, and activists working to stop drone warfare. Please contact us with any suggestions, comments or questions.
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#StandWithRand
CodePink lost whatever little credibility they had when they pulled this Valentine's Day stunt.
Sid
Thanks for reminding us of REAL LIBERALS who never waver in their fight against Bush Policies and War Criminals.
Time to send them some more money so they can continue their fight to end Bush policies and restore Democracy in this country.
We can always count on you to remind us of important issues and the people who have fought so valiantly since Bush first stole the election and set this country on its downward course.
for Code Pink.
Did you know that Obama was/is one of their most ardent admirers btw?
Love that woman. She is a true Liberal Democrat.
Sid
or did a drone do that?
Were we killing all these innocent people with F-15s, it would be just as bad.
It's the rules of engagement that are criminal:
* Signature strikes, in which we kill unknown targets because they look like they might be acting like possible "terrorists"
* Designating all military-aged males as "militants", thereby artificially reducing the number of civilian casualties we report
* "Double taps" designed to kill first responders
* Targeting weddings and funerals because a "terrorist" (undoubtedly "Al Qaeda's #2 Man" might be there
None of these are defensible, at least if one is in any way liberal (or human).
years. It usually works the other way. First you are naive and trust your government to do the right thing, then you find out you were wrong.
In this case it appears to have worked the other way around for some reason.
Consistent and repetitive. Whenever I see the same things being repeated by numerous people I marvel at the coincidence that so many came up with the same 'logic' at the same time!!
In fact there is a growing body of evidence that members of the Saudi govt were COMPLICIT in this terrorism!
Why aren't we searching for and bombing terrorists there INSTEAD of launching our drone strikes from this undemocratic country?
PetroDollars
Let me ask you. Have you ever had a child blown to bits from a monster in the sky?
I absolutely hope you will never have that experience or anyone else.
But for those who have, here's what you need to do. You need to speak the loved ones of the victims of these 'marvelous' weapons in the remote hills of Afghanistan and Pakistan and Yemen and explain to THEM why this is such a great way to kill people because we COULD kill thousands instead of a few wedding parties.
You are talking to the wrong people here to try to justify these crimes.
Talk to the victims and bring them up to date on the wonders of death machines and then come back and tell us what they had to say.
This, btw, HAS been done, the victims HAVE expressed their opinion on the slaughter of their chidren by these marvelously kind WMDs we brought to their villages.
But that is who you need to USplain all of this to and hope they understand! 
First of all, we could stop funding Al Qaeda. It's the height of absurdity, to use Al Qaeda to take liberties and money and then declare that wedding parties must drone bombed to "get Al Qaeda" whilst funneling money to them. Really. It's beyond criminal, it's treason. And it's INSANE. PSYCHO.
Is this going to continue for the next 5 or 6 hundred years? When is enough blood enough? How many more dead children?
Due to incompetence 19 Arabs with Box cutters managed to squeak through the best most expensive air defense system in the world.
Hasn't the US extracted enough revenge? The nation is protected by seas and friendly countries. Maybe next time the Feds get multiple warnings about devout hard drinking coke snorting Muslims that happen to be taking flight lessons they will keep an eye on them or perhaps share information with "Homeland Security".
Doesn't that sound better than creating more enemies every day? Because if Kim Jung Il sent a drone over your area and somehow incinerated your kid while he was walking next to a "person of interest" you'd spend the rest of your life plotting, wouldn't you.
1913-2013: From Rebels to Slaves in a hundred years.
"We must, indeed, all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately."
Last edited Thu Mar 6, 2014, 10:10 AM - Edit history (7)
And here's a little more info on the weapons you seem to believe are better than any other and the devastation they cause.
By Medea Benjamin
Tuesday, November 05, 2013
Excerpts:
Watching the beautiful 9-year-old Nabila relate how her grandmother was blown to bits while outside picking okra softened the hearts of even the most hardened DC politicos. From the Congressmen to the translator to the media, tears flowed. Even the satirical journalist Dana Milbank, who normally pokes fun at everything and everyone in his Washington Post column, Example: covered the family’s tragedy with genuine sympathy.
The visit by the Rehman family was timed for the release of the groundbreaking new documentary Example Unmanned: America’s Drone Wars by Robert Greenwald of Brave New Foundation. The emotion-packed film is filled with victims’ stories, including that of 16-year-old Tariq Aziz, a peace-loving, soccer-playing teenager obliterated three days after attending an anti-drone conference in Islamabad. Lawyers in the firm pose the critical question: If Tariq was a threat, why didn’t they capture him at the meeting and give him the right to a fair trial? Another just released documentary is Wounds of Waziristan, a well-crafted, 20-minute piece by Pakistani filmmaker Madiha Tahir that explains how drone attacks rip apart communities and terrorize entire populations.
Just as the visit and the films have put real faces on drone victims, a plethora of new reports by prestigious institutions—five in total—have exposed new dimensions of the drone wars.
Full article and more on the Global Drone Summit November 16-17 in Washington DC: http://www.zcommunications.org/drones-have-come-out-of-the-shadows-by-medea-benjamin.html
Human Rights Watch
Amnesty International
License to Kill, released by the Geneva-based group Al Karama
Adding to these well-researched reports by non-governmental organizations are two documents commissioned by the United Nations. One is by Christof Heyns, the UN's special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions. The other is by Ben Emmerson, the special rapporteur on human rights and counter-terrorism.
Video.
http://www.democracynow.org/2013/2/8/codepink_repeatedly_disrupts_brennan_hearing_calling
SEN. DIANNE FEINSTEIN: All right, I’m going to—we’re going to halt the hearing. I’m going to ask that the room be cleared and that the CODEPINK associates not be permitted to come back in. Done this five times now, and five times are enough.
"Go to Sleep or I Will Call the Planes"
—By Adam Serwer| Wed Apr. 24, 2013 6:01 AM PDT
"Women used to say [to kids] go to sleep or I will call your father," Muslimi said. "Now they say go to sleep, or I will call the planes."
Last week's strike killed Hameed al-Radmi, described by the US government as an Al Qaeda leader, and four suspected militants. But Muslimi told the Senate that Radmi had recently met with Yemeni government officials, and could easily have been captured, rather than killed in a strike that alienated everyone in the village.
"[A]ll they have is the psychological fear and terror that now occupies their souls," Muslimi said of the residents of Wessab. "They fear that their home or a neighbor's home could be bombed at any time by a U.S. drone." President Obama received some backup from an unlikely source—Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), who has spent the last week criticizing the Obama administration for handling the suspect in the Boston Marathon bombings in civilian court. Graham said although he would prefer to capture terror suspects, Yemeni officials couldn't be trusted to apprehend them. "The world we live in is where if you share this closely held information you're going to end up tipping off somebody," Graham told Muslimi.
Full Article: http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2013/04/yemen-drone-strikes-senate-hearing
http://childvictimsofwar.org.uk/get-informed/drone-warfare/
“Even one child death from drone missiles or suicide bombings is one child death too many. Children have no place in war and all parties should do their utmost to protect children from violent attacks at all times.” Sarah Crowe UNICEF
US: Strikes Kill Civilians in Yemen Youtube video by Human Rights Watch
Remote Killing of Civilians
The US has used armed drones in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Libya, Somalia and recently in the Phillipines. Over 200 children have already been killed in these strikes since 2004. See The Bureau of Investigative Journalism
Change.org
Cease deadly drone strikes that kill civilians in Pakistan.
http://www.change.org/petitions/cease-deadly-drone-strikes-that-kill-civilians-in-pakistan
"Real people are suffering real harm" but these civilian deaths by drones are being mostly ignored by governmental oversight agencies and also by the news media according to James Cavallaro of Stanford University, one of the authors of a study by Stanford and NYU in the report, "Living Under Drones". The results of this recent study reported on Sept. 25, 2012 concludes that only about 2% of drone casualties are top militant leaders. Up to 884 civilians, including 176 children have been killed in Pakistan since 2004 due to drone strikes.
In October 2012, 8-year-old Nabeela ventured out with her 68-year-old grandmother Mamana Bibi to do daily chores in their family's large, open field. Moments later, Mamana was blasted into pieces by a US drone strike that appears to have been aimed directly at her. Amnesty International did not find any evidence she was endangering anyone, let alone posing an imminent threat to the US. Yet a year has passed and the US government has not acknowledged Mamana Bibi's death, let alone provided justice or compensation for it.
"Will I be next?," a new report from Amnesty International, finds that this killing, and several other so-called targeted killings from US drone strikes in Pakistan, may constitute extrajudicial executions or war crimes. Based on interviews with 60 survivors and eyewitnesses to these strikes, "Will I be next?" documents potentially unlawful killings and abuses, and makes recommendations to the US government for how to uphold the right to life and ensure accountability for any unlawful killings.
http://dronespakistan.amnestyusa.org/
http://www.amnestyusa.org/our-work/issues/security-and-human-rights/drones/will-i-be-next
War from Above
by Richard Hugus / January 2nd, 2014
There is little news about the down side to hosting drones in all these areas of the country, each with a populace that has simply not been consulted. Drones first came to our attention at the beginning of “the war on terror.” We learned of them first as weapons for highly illegal, cowardly, and indiscriminate “targeted killings” in foreign lands? These weapons have murdered countless innocent people in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia pursuant to “kill lists” drawn up every week by the CIA and Pentagon, and approved by the White House. These weapons fulfill the US Air Force’s fantasy of “death from above,” carried out by pilots working in the security and comfort of US bases who, acting as judge, jury, and executioner, destroy supposed enemies from computer consoles as if it were a video game. The cowardliness of wars of aggression being conducted against innocent people in dirt-poor lands by unseen “UAV pilots” in air-conditioned offices thousands of miles away cannot be over-emphasized. This is what unmanned aircraft have brought so far to the reputation of the United States – a new low in the entire universe of human ethics. Murder abroad is but the advance of capitalism at home. Wedding parties in Afghanistan have been decimated so that Amazon can deliver cds and smart phones to our door by drone.
http://dissidentvoice.org/2014/01/war-from-above/
Voices From the Drone Summit:
On one occasion, Hale located an individual who had been involved with Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs). The man was riding a motorcycle in the mountains early in the morning. He met up with four other people around a campfire drinking tea. Hale relayed the information that led to a drone strike, which killed all five men. Hale had no idea whether the other four men had done anything. Hale had thought he was part of an operation protecting Afghanistan. But when the other four men died – a result of “guilt by association” – Hale realized he “was no longer part of something moral or sane or rational.” He had heard someone say that “terrorists are cowards” because they used IEDs. “What was different,” Hale asked, “between that and the little red joy stick that pushes a button thousands of miles away”?
http://www.zcommunications.org/voices-from-the-drone-summit-by-marjorie-cohn.html
I learned all kinds of things. We were told that a lot of people killed by drones were people who would have been very easy to capture. We got examples of young men who were travelling and had just passed a checkpoint, and a mile after they were killed by a drone. Or people who were living right outside the capital city, Sana’a, and maybe would have turned themselves in to figure out why the US wanted to kill them, but they had no way of knowing.
http://www.zcommunications.org/drone-wars-by-medea-benjamin.html
The two drone strikes in November show that these attacks don’t just kill and maim individuals. They also blow up peace talks. They weaken democratically elected governments. They sabotage bilateral relations. They sow hatred and resentment.
http://www.zcommunications.org/drone-strikes-in-pakistan-reapers-of-their-own-destruction-by-medea-benjamin.html
http://www.livingunderdrones.org/
http://unmanned.warcosts.com/stream
http://dronespakistan.amnestyusa.org/
by William Boardman / February 26th, 2014
In 2009, my home was attacked by a drone. My brother and son were martyred. My son’s name was Hafiz Zahinullah. My brother’s name was Asif Iqbal. There was a third person who was a stone mason. He was a Pakistani. His name was Khaliq Dad…. Their bodies were covered with wounds. Later, I found some of their fingers in the rubble.
– Kareem Khan, a Pakistani journalist, speaking of his personal experience with civilians killed by Americans, in the documentary “Wounds of Waziristan,” 2013
… it is a hard fact that U.S. strikes have resulted in civilian casualties, a risk that exists in every war. And for the families of those civilians, no words or legal construct can justify their loss. For me and those in my chain of command, those deaths will haunt us as long as we live, just as we are haunted by the civilian casualties that have occurred throughout conventional fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq.
– President Obama, May 23, 2013, at the National Defense University
http://dissidentvoice.org/2014/02/obama-drones-on/
http://www.journeyman.tv/66218/short-films/wounds-of-waziristan-hd.html
for some enlightenment on drone operators, their doubts and their victims.
Sid
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424127887324665604579081193199072318
However, Afgahn military fatalities are rising, not from drones, but from Taliban insurgents, the ones we're aiming the drones at. So it appears that drones are doing the fighting previously done by US troops. The fact that Afghan security forces are getting hit harder as we leave suggests that drones at this stage of their technology aren't as effective as troops, and that's pretty much the point made by the article author, though not necessarily by Guardian.
In any case, whose interests are do you think are served by trying to turn the public against drones, for whatever reason?
built by Israel. Hermes 450, its used by lots of countries its not weaponized.
Here's a picture from Glenn's column "'Sending a message': what the US and UK are attempting to do"
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/aug/21/sending-message-miranda-gchq-nsa
The caption reads:
"The remains of the hard disc and Macbook that held information leaked by Edward Snowden to the Guardian and was destroyed at the behest of the UK government. Photograph: Roger Tooth"
But as you can see there is an old sound or video card from a desktop pci slot- that laptops don't have
Numerous attempts were made both to Glenn and Rusbridger to clarify but all were ignored.
Greenwald didn't write this but here's the picture they are using when they post an article about him now that he's gone
Glenn Greenwald announces departure from the Guardian
http://www.theguardian.com/media/2013/oct/15/glenn-greenwald-announces-departure-guardian
Here it is again:
Pierre Omidyar plunges first $50m into media venture with Glenn Greenwald
http://www.theguardian.com/media/2013/dec/19/pierre-omidyar-first-50m-media-venture-glenn-greenwald
